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If follow-up interviews were conducted, the Judges who conducted the follow-up interviews should be the ones to deliberate and create a ranking among those teams. It is a best practice to have first-choice award nominees, plus three or more additional alternate candidates.
If information comes to light that a team may have violated the Code of Conduct or Student Centered Policy, either by judge observations or from Volunteer Field Notes to Judges, that team’s consideration for the judged award should be scrutinized by the Judge Advisor. If there is found to be merit in that information, the award is given to the next alternate team in the award nomination ranking.
Volunteer Field Notes to Judges should be retained by the Judge Advisor and communicated to the Event Partner and the REC Foundation for possible follow up to Code of Conduct violations. Hopefully this is a rare occurrence, but proper communication is important for transparency and to ensure that consequences for actions involving the Code of Conduct are being applied fairly.
In the case of the Excellence Award, that winner should come from the list of Design Award finalists meeting the Performance and other Judged Awards criteria. Moving a team from being a Design Award finalist to Excellence Award winner may result in a reshuffling of winners for other awards such that no team earns more than a single judged award at the event. The Judge Advisor should reconcile award winners to ensure that each award winner is earning the highest award at the event for which they are eligible. Having three or more ranked candidates for each award is very helpful in this situation and eliminates the need for additional deliberations. Award Precedence is Excellence, Design, Innovate, Think, Amaze, Build, Create, Judges, Inspire, Energy and Sportsmanship.
For Example: Two forms are shown below. Figure 1 represents the award nominees prior to the Excellence Award being decided. Figure 2 represents the results after the Excellence Award has been decided.
Team A has been selected to win the Excellence Award. Team A was also the top candidate for the Design Award. Therefore, the next team in the Design Award ranking (Team B) will now win the Design Award and not the Innovate Award because the Design Award is of higher precedence in the Qualifying Criteria. Team D will become the Innovate Award winner. Team C, formally third place for the Think Award, is now the Think Award winner since Teams A and B are earning awards of higher precedence. In the case of the Judges Award (Team E), that award winner is unchanged.
Figure 1: Prior to Excellence Award Determination
Figure 2: After Excellence Award Determination